Monthly Archives: April 2016

User experience research is really important in healthcare. You need those insights to optimize the user experience and make your technology as good as it can be. But how do you know what desires and expectations users/customers bring into the experience? And how do you go deeper and identify what will bring real value to users/customers?

As you know, user experience research in health IT typically focuses on likes and dislikes and problems and opportunities with the interface, which makes sense. After all, the interface is what users use and what feeds workflows. For some technologies, user experience research also includes how providers, patients, and the device all interact.

To understand value, it’s important to go beyond assessing how users/customers interact with the interface and beyond other aspects of the use case.

Before Use

Let’s start with what is involved with users becoming users; that is, how they get to the interaction and experience. This requires understanding and tapping into their desires and expectations.

Consider: Are users coming to the experience by choice? Are they wanting to accomplish what your technology accomplishes? Are they required to use your solution? What are their expectations? What are their desires? How does using your solution fit into the bigger picture of their workflow and priorities?

These attitudinal precursors to use can dramatically affect the user experience. Decades of research show know how powerfully expectations shape experience. So be sure you know the answers before you test usability and the user experience. Do the research to get answers to these questions. A quick and dirty approach is to talk with users just prior to using your software or technology. Alternatively, you can bring them into a focus group facility, and with appropriate props, have them imagine they’ll be using your technology and find out what’s going through their minds and hearts. Just be sure to ask the right questions and without bias.

Observing Value

Another great complement to user experience research within is in-situ/ethnographic research at clinical practices to understand what will truly bring value to healthcare workflows within a broader context than your technology.

Watch at first. Just watch. Then ask questions to understand. Really focus on understanding problems, not coming up with solutions (yet!).

Ask them what they’re thinking as their waiting for data to be processed or for the next prompt. Identify what matters to them emotionally and pragmatically. Doing so will give you tremendous insight into what they desire and value, which in turn will affect what solutions you make and what user experiences you offer to help them fulfill their desires and get done what they need to get done.

This kind of deep observational research reveals what aspects of their workflow providers and administrators find most frustrating, what wastes the most time, what desires are unfulfilled, and ultimately what interferes with better patient care.

As my friend and mentor Don Norman, a noted author and leading Design Thinker summarizes: Observe/Think/Make. This is the critical “observe” step. If it’s done with an eye toward understanding the broader context within which your technology may be used, it will provide you with far more valuable insights.

Do observational ethnographic research in clinical practices whenever you can. If access is a problem, find other ways to observe workflow. Create mock workstations or procedure rooms and invite administrators and clinicians in. Again, you can use focus groups as a place for crudely emulating workflow. As long as the setup puts users into the right mindspace, it can get you valuable insights.

Bottom line, going deeper to tap into customer desire and understand what motivates users and what will bring them real value will make your UX work far more gratifying and effective and lead to better Health IT solutions.

In medtech, you encounter unique challenges to making devices and solutions customers want and will buy. External forces, like downward cost pressures, reimbursement challenges, and regulatory requirements make it tough. Plus a lot of device and IT companies impose relentless pressure to get the next big thing to market – and to do it now.

In light of all these pressures, how do you increase your effectiveness at making devices customers want and buy? Keep customers first in how you think and all you do.

I know, I know. It’s easy to say. It can be hard to do. And it’s not a panacea to counter all the marketplace challenges you face. But it can ground your thinking, guide your decisions, and help you get the best possible results.

In a recent article published in Device Talk, the med device industry blog from MD+DI, I outlined four keys to making devices customers want and will buy, from a customer-centric perspective.

The 4 keys:

Start with the right business mindset

Get customer input – the right way

Decide between MVP and alternatives

Recognize your work saves lives

This approach will lead you to think differently, engage with customers differently, and design and market your devices differently. You really can increase your effectiveness by keeping customers first in how you think and all you do.

The workshop participants – mostly marketing directors and managers – were incredible. It was my experience with them that was equal parts delightful and humbling. What stood out was their openness and candor, their desire to improve, their appreciation of the customer voice, and their willingness to challenge their own thinking and mine. And most of all, their commitment to deeply understanding and serving their customers.Continue reading Hope for the Future of Health IT Marketing!→